Cube remake is on hold while they figure out a new direction

Vincenzo Natali’s Cube is one of the great underappreciated modern classics of the genre (seriously, why don’t people talk about Cube more?) and last year was it was inevitably picked up for a remake.

However, according to Arrow In The Head, the redevelopment has stalled, as revealed by screenwriter Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Passengers), who was working on the movie with director Saman Kesh and writer Phil Gawthorne.

“I have been involved with it,” Spaihts told the site. “I think it’s resting right now as we look for a new creative direction, but we still are inspired by the vision of that original, independent, high-concept film. With any luck, we’ll still bring a new iteration of that story to light.”

The site also asked if Kesh was still attached to the movie, but Spaihts was quite honest about the information he was able to give. “To be honest, I’ll have to check. I don’t know.”

So, “resting” sound like a fairly indefinite state of not moving forward, doesn’t it? We’re huge fans of Cube and we’re not really sure what a remake could really bring to Natali’s vision, which is fiendishly clever, claustrophobic and nasty. That being said, we’re always open to the idea that a great director and a great writer should be able to find something new in great stories, so we’ll be interested to see if anyone does eventually come on board.

For those who haven’t seen the original film or don’t remember, Cube finds six strangers waking up in something between a maze and a prison. Each room has a series of possible exits, but each subsequent room may contain a deadly trap. Can they figure out a way to escape, or will the combination of evil designs and human nature scupper them all?

In the meantime, there’s still the two follow-ups, Cube 2: Hypercube and Cube: Zero, which aren’t great, to be honest, but they are more Cube at least.